The Exodus Towers (17 page)

The soldiers balked at the idea of trying to fight with the suits on. But as they planned their mission, it became clear the precaution would be wise. They had no guarantee the aura road had even remained in place. Whatever had befallen the colony, it was possible the aura towers had been moved, scattered, or pulled back to camp. No one knew.

“Five minutes,” someone said.

“Five minutes,” a voice in the background said.

Russell leaned in over Alex’s shoulder and studied the image. The camera had a perfect view right down the middle of the cockpit. The aircraft, another loaner from Grillo’s dwindling fleet, had a side-by-side pilot and navigator seat layout. Flat monitors made up the bulk of the dash, showing virtual instrumentation along with maps and other indicators.

Both seats were empty. The colonists apparently didn’t have anyone who could pilot the ship—an interesting detail—but they’d been able to program the autopilot system.

The view out the vehicle’s window was too small and grainy to discern anything yet, but the location of the traitors was now known: Brazil.

Russell hadn’t stopped smiling since that bit of information came in. Already he’d thought up and discarded dozens of attack plans, always thinking up something more spectacular than the last.

He watched as the craft slipped over the coastline and followed the edge of a river. It skimmed low over the ground. Russell saw treetops zoom by above the height of the plane.

“Interesting,” Alex said.

“What?”

“Flying so low; it’s a risk. Like they’re worried someone might see them if they came in at a normal angle.”

The aircraft banked again and followed a smaller river.
This time there were hints of a cityscape to the west. Russell glanced at another window on Alex’s terminal, which showed the physical location of the tracking device on a map. The plane followed a river that marked the northern edge of a city called Belém, heading east and then southeast.

“One minute,” the voice in the background said.

At a bridge spanning the river, the aircraft slowed to a crawl and then turned to follow the road that extended out from the bridge back toward the city. The road, Russell saw on the map, snaked around to eventually meet the city’s southern edge, where dockyards lined a wide river.

Then the plane slowed completely and hovered. The sound of the thrusters spinning down could be heard. Their view out the cockpit showed the black shapes of the metropolis’s skyline against a clear, starry sky.

“They’re going in dark,” Alex said. “Taking pains to land in secret.”

The plane turned in place to orient itself toward the south. Treetops replaced Belém’s skyline. The rainforest spanned the horizon.

A second later the aircraft’s engines stopped and the landing lights came on.

The aircraft had landed in a clearing alongside a dirt road. The road went up a small rise maybe thirty meters away and then dipped back down and out of sight. Dense rainforest lined both edges, the trees still rippling from the exhaust wash generated by the landing.

Russell ignored all of this. His eyes were locked on a black tower that sat beside the road, not far from the craft. The object looked to be about as tall as a two-story home, and its square base was perhaps two or three meters wide.

It looked wholly out of place in the surroundings. And, despite being on the sloped road and uneven ground, it sat perfectly upright.

After a second Russell realized that another tower loomed in the distance, just over the rise. A black, angular monument against the night sky, completely out of place among the dense trees.

“The fuck are those?” he whispered.

Alex shook his head and continued to study the screen. He zoomed in slightly to remove most of the cockpit from their view.

Within seconds a squad of environment-suited soldiers flowed past the nose of the aircraft, rallying at the base of the nearby tower. They crouched there and waited until the entire group had exited the plane.

“Hmm … odd,” Alex said.

“What?”

“They’re wearing environment suits, but according to the map they’re only about one klick away from the Elevator.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have an aura like ours.”

The idea explained a lot about Tania’s recent requests. Air and water, in exchange for so many of the Space-Ag platforms, made total sense if they had no way to scrub Belém’s air of the disease. The supplies would only buy them time, though. Maybe they had some plan to activate the aura? He racked his brain, trying to figure out how any of that would require a commando squad to fly in the dark. Whatever it was, this mission was worth nine farm platforms, almost all of Tania Sharma’s remaining leverage.

Russell watched with bemused interest as the combatants readied their gear. Gun-mounted flashlights were activated, the beams sweeping across the ground. Some part of him yearned to be there with them, gearing up for a fight. That corner of his mind didn’t care whose side they were on, or what their purpose was. Combat just got his juices flowing, in a way no woman could. None he’d yet to meet, at least.

The camera’s view became obscured as someone entered the cockpit. Alex quickly zoomed out to the full view again, and they watched as the person began to tap commands into a touchscreen near the pilot’s seat.

“Power-down sequence,” Alex noted. “The camera is tapped into the flight computer’s power line. We’ll lose our feed in a minute.”

The person in the cockpit tensed suddenly and dropped to a crouch. The muffled sounds of machine-gun fire thumped through the speaker.

Outside, the gathered soldiers were shooting in all directions.
Rapid muzzle-flashes lit up the surrounding trees like lightning.

A human dressed all in black was among the fighters, Russell saw. He quickly realized “human” might not be accurate. The being clawed and punched with terrifying speed. Bodies fell with each blurred swing of the thing’s arm.

Some of the fighters broke and ran, one toward the aircraft and another toward the cover of the trees. But a second creature emerged from the foliage, galloping on all fours. It pounced on the back of the nearest fleeing enemy, and the pair collapsed into a rolling ball of flailing limbs.

The creatures moved like subhumans. Russell knew that, and yet their appearance was very different. They were clad from head to toe in some kind of skintight black outfit.

A bloodbath unfolded on the screen. Russell saw one of Tania’s fighters stagger away from the carnage, his environment suit torn to shreds, both hands clutching at his neck, where blood flowed freely. One of the creatures spotted the man and raced over to him. It swung, raking a hand across the back of the man’s head. The poor bastard collapsed in a sickening heap, dead before he hit the ground.

The man in the cockpit stepped backward, blocking much of the view. A third creature appeared in front of the plane, illuminated fully by the landing lights. The black material it wore seemed to have hardened panels, like armor plating.

As Russell watched, a flash of red light appeared to emanate from the creature’s eyes, as if it had trained a laser on the cockpit window.

Then it jumped.

In a split second the being reappeared right outside the window, clinging to the fuselage. It tilted its head at the cowering man in the cockpit. Then it raised one hand and placed it on the glass. Light erupted from the creature’s palm in a blinding flash. The tempered glass shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, but it held its shape.

A black-clad fist punched a hole straight through the thick barrier. The hand then swiped violently, knocking the shards away, and the creature was inside. It dove on the man and the two fell out of the camera’s view.

The sound of the man in the cockpit being torn to pieces was so revolting that Russell reached out and turned the volume down. Alex sat perfectly still, making no effort to stop him.

Outside the aircraft, the battle was already over. Broken bodies lay everywhere, and the armored, outfitted subhumans were gone, vanished into the forest as quickly as they had appeared. Not twenty seconds had passed since the first shots were fired.

The instruments and screens in the cockpit started to go blank, and the landing lights turned off, plunging the grisly scene outside into darkness.

A second later the feed ended.

Russell swallowed. He realized he’d put a hand on Alex’s shoulder and gripped the man’s shirt in a white-knuckled fist. He let go and stepped back. “What the hell did we just see?”

Alex half-glanced over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to say something, and then snapped it shut and looked back at the blank monitor.

“I mean,” Russell said, “what the actual fuck? And what were those towers?”

“I’m not sure I want to know,” Alex replied, his voice laden with naked dread.

A long silence followed. When Russell finally got his breathing under control, he began to chuckle.

The chuckle turned into a rolling, uncontrollable laugh.

Alex turned to him. “What’s so funny?”

“Tania,” Russell replied. “She. Is.
Screwed
. Totally, utterly, royally screwed!”

The dire look on Alex’s face only made him laugh harder.

Darwin, Australia

5.MAY.2283

S
AMANTHA TOOK ONE
last swig of her cider and flipped the cup over on the bar.

“Done,” she said.

Woon bobbed his head at her, his constant smile almost hidden beneath the long white beard and mustache he wore, both extending down to his waist. He spoke very little English, and Sam knew only a few words of Mandarin. This left their conversations one-sided, with Samantha blathering on about whatever she felt like talking about, and Woon just nodding. His smile seemed painted on, and even if she launched into a lengthy, solemn diatribe about the fates the rest of her crew had suffered, his grin never faltered.

She pointed at the glass with two fingers, her thumb up to create a mock handgun. “My tab,” she stated, and winked at him.

Woon, of course, nodded. His eyes, so narrow they looked closed, still managed to twinkle in the dim room.

Samantha climbed off her stool, yawned, and stretched. She dropped to the floor and rattled off ten push-ups in rapid succession, then flipped over onto her back and did the same number of sit-ups.

She bounced to her feet, waved to Woon, and headed for the wide entrance to the hangar-turned-kitchen. Both of the massive doors were open, rolled to either side of the front of the building. This indicated Woon was open for business, but the stools and tables were mostly empty.

A glance at the old digital clock on the wall told her the time in large, amber numbers: 3:14
A.M
.

Two scavengers sat at a table off to the side. One had his head down on the table, one arm curled around to block his face. The other flipped through a worn paperback book, its cover weathered to the point of being unintelligible. Sam recognized the second man as Lee, the pilot of a short-range boat. They’d flirted here, once upon a time. She turned toward their table and took an empty seat. Lee’s eyes flicked up to her, then back to his book.

Not even a hello
, she thought.

“Lee,” she said.

“G’day,” he muttered, and flipped a page. A greeting used for random strangers passed on the street.

Sam jerked her head toward Lee’s sleeping friend. “Looks like you need a new drinking partner. I could grab us a bottle.”

He glanced sidelong at her then, and some silent deliberation passed through his mind. “Thanks, but I’m okay.”

The lingering effects of Woon’s cider jumbled her thoughts. Six months ago he would have invited her to stay and drink, and within an hour they’d probably be in the cargo bay of his plane, making the beast with two backs.

But not now. No hint at all of that camaraderie.

“C’mon,” she said, leaning forward in hopes of earning more than a glance. “Shots, you and me. We can go to my roof. Dawn is still—”

“I fly at dawn,” Lee said. He dog-eared a page in his book and set it down carefully on the table. “Your orders, remember?”

She did, vaguely. Grillo wanted more output from the crews, and two missions a day was the only solution Sam could find. She doled out Grillo’s requests not based on profit or eagerness, but on things like range, readiness, cargo room, and capacitor charge time.

None of the crews liked it, but they didn’t have much choice. No one had seen hide nor hair of Prumble in months, and anyway the days of picking and choosing missions were long gone. Grillo says jump, the crews jump.

“Maybe we should inspect your bird then,” she said with what she hoped was a coy smile. “A thorough examination, just you and me—”

“Sam,” Lee said with an annoyed sigh, “it wouldn’t be good for others to see us cavorting. Sorry, just the way it is.”

“Cavorting? Jesus. I’m not proposing fucking marriage, I just want a quick tumble. What’s the big deal?”

“Not a good idea, Sam. Sorry.” He picked up his book again and pointedly began to read.

She stood so fast her chair tumbled over backward. Lee winced but kept reading, and with that Sam turned and strode away, the warmth of alcohol in her head transforming instantly to a cold desire for more. She told herself they would come around. Grillo’s plan required time before the rewards would be clear. Until then, she doubted any of the crews would smile and wave at her when she passed, much less jump between the sheets.